


tenderly the light fell (it seemed to come through her eyelids)

by acupoftea



Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: Choices, F/F, Post-Game, also chloe was hard to pin down, bay ends so bae can live ending, but i think i got her voice eventually
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-15
Updated: 2017-02-15
Packaged: 2018-09-24 15:34:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9768314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acupoftea/pseuds/acupoftea
Summary: Chloe used to count a good day as scoring some joints, as a flash of Rachel’s bare skin, as a day where she didn’t have to see David once.Now the good days are like this; the girl she loves, and the girl she loves staying.





	

**Author's Note:**

> shoutout to virginia woolf for the title, and to my gf for making me play this game, and for making me gay.

_“we made it.”_

 

That’s what Chloe hears in the rain, as it drums down all around them, thundering against the metal top of her car.

 

_“we made it-“_

 

It’s so loud-

 

_“we made it”_

 

And it’s been raining for hours now, since they passed through Sacramento-

 

_“we made it we made it we made it-“_

 

Max is curled up in the back, a piece of her short hair falling flat against her mouth, her knees tucked up and wedged between the seat and the door. they stopped at a gas station several miles back, and afterwards max had clambered in the back and fallen asleep straight away, dead to the world.

 

Chloe takes a deep breath, her mouth suddenly dry.

 

Max hadn’t said anything about it the first time, about the aspirin, the water bottles, the snack bars that Chloe slipped into her bag, just as Chloe didn’t say anything when Max pulled out her money for the gas, and she noticed the hundred bills stashed in her wallet.

 

Chloe figures it’s the rest of the money that Max had for college, the money her parents had sent over with her, the money for a college that no longer needs it-

 

But Chloe won’t ask, just as she knows Max won’t mention the supplies Chloe stashed in the back afterwards.

 

And the road never changes. A week in, and she’d always dreamed of a road trip like this, Max’s hand in hers and blasting her favourite tunes through the speakers of her truck. Hell, Chloe wouldn’t have cared if it was more of the indie shit that Max liked, but that had been a dream that lodged in her mind back when there was the promise of _best friends_ forever (but then again, Chloe was always someone who loved too damn much for her own good.)

 

So she’d carried it with her, forgotten it, and then a week ago and a lifetime of waiting it had come true: Chloe and Max, the two of them, against the world.

 

Just like Chloe had always wanted. She had finally gotten her wish.

 

She glances in the rear view mirror at Max, her head pressed up against the window, eyes shut, a small part in her lips from whatever she’s dreaming about, and Chloe looks away, again, again, again.

 

They’re learning to rearrange themselves over what to say, over what _not_ to say. A week in, and Chloe tries not to think about it – “it” is Max; “it” is arcadia bay; “it” is the world that Chloe has known from day one is unfair, but she never thought it would be like _this_.

 

 

-

 

They try to save money where they can. they’re slowly making their way down the west coast, avoiding diners where they can, and Chloe simultaneously thinks _thank you_ and _fuck you_.

 

It’s like, so what she’s not happy, neither is Max. They’re both grateful and they’re ruined but they’re together (and alive, a voice adds, and Chloe knows deep down that this is so much more than survivor’s guilt).

 

They stop over on a farm for two weeks. It’s run by an old woman with red hair and a man with shaky hands that take them in, lets them work for food. They spend most of the days in the sun (it’s turning over from summer to autumn but not yet) checking on the crops (the way the woman shows them to, calling out instructions from her tractor. She lets them have a go, and Max sits on Chloe’s lap and drives it, speeding back and forth across the field with a recklessness she only occasionally lets slip; Chloe tips her head back and feels like she could touch the sky), watering the garden around the house, feeding the animals, cleaning the porch, and it’s the second Wednesday in a row when Chloe looks up for the first time.

 

There’s Max standing in the field, there’s Max sitting on the steps, and when Chloe looks up she sees her – _max_ – standing on the porch, and it hits her in a way it hasn’t since they left a month ago. Chloe looks at her, in her threadbare plaid (new clothes is something they probably won’t ever be able to afford) and it’s all Chloe can see – Max and all the light from the setting sun that’s caught in her hair, her eyes.

 

The thought hits chloe before she can catch her breath “ _we made it”_ (again) except this time it’s more of a _“i love her”_ and “ _i’m not okay”_ and a _“maybe I could be”_ all at once.

 

And she knows she’s supposed to be happy, at least, with this.

 

Max chose her. She never really believed it until that last moment – Chloe has spent her whole life chasing after love in a way only someone like her can – someone who’s never really had it. She knows now that’s not true (her mum’s face flashes against her mind and it’s like this as well – she’ll never be happy because then and there, the tightness in her chest is overwhelming but she keeps stock still, just breathes through it-) but it had been Max, Max who chose Chloe Price with the stupid fucking dyed hair-

 

Chloe can’t look at it. A month, that seems, if possible, even _longer_ than the one before it (Rachel Amber and Max Caulfield and she could write an entire essay on girls that have sucker-punched Chloe fist-to-heart just by _talking_ to her) but Chloe thinks if she ever faced it headlong it might just burn her alive.

 

Because the truth is she’s never going to feel like she deserves this, neither of them are, but when she takes Max’s hand she feels something uncurl, like in all that grieving (and Chloe hasn’t ever admitted it was that until now), there might also be room to grow.

 

-

 

And then sometimes it’s all she can think about – Chloe knows bone-deep that she was never meant to be the one left standing in all the rubble and dust.

 

“I thought it was my destiny” Max says, when Chloe brings it up – and it’s only once that she does, that she can talk about it. Chloe blinks. Twice.

 

“Well. Uh.” What the hell is she meant to say to _that?_

 

Opens and closes her mouth like a fish three times before she can find her voice. “Damn max, I didn’t know you believed in that kind of shit.” It’s an idiotic question, an idiotic thing to even _think_ let alone say, but Max has a knack for making her sound like one, even now.  

 

Max starts to reply, “I didn’t think I did either but-“

 

And she stops. Max looks at her with those doe eyes and Chloe is such a fucking sucker. “I believed in you and-“

 

Max pauses, again, and then “This was meant to be, you know? like…“

 

And neither of them have ever been any good at this and Chloe only feels like she’s _dying_ while Max struggles to find her words, but then she continues-

 

“This is it. You’re it.” And the way she says it, so final, well Chloe doesn’t even try this time to open her mouth to respond.

 

She knows what Max is saying – _it was always going to be you, chloe_  - and she remembers up near the lighthouse, the rain and wind and the look in Max eyes, how she’d looked at Chloe like she was the only thing left in the world. It had been the look of someone desperate, like survival _was_ Chloe and how does someone like Chloe live with that – a girl (not just a girl, it’s _max_ and doesn’t that just make it so much _more_ ) who chose her over everyone, over the world,  and not just once but everytime, and she thinks about what max said about alternate realities, how she left, how Chloe found her in that car park, and maybe there is some truth to it because Max is the only good thing Chloe has ever really had, the only good thing that’s ever really stayed. That left and came back (and if you love someone-).

 

So many of Chloe’s thoughts circle like this and it hits her as hard every time because she’s never been one for coping, especially when it’s something as big as this. Something like a love bigger than the world.

 

So she takes Max’s hand and remembers the look in her eyes the first time Chloe found her sprawled in front of her car, and Chloe knows she’s got the same look now. It’s the way you look at someone who you’d die for. No, who you’d live for.

 

-

 

But they have good days and bad days.

It will never be easy, but bad days for Chloe involve Chloe shouting, Chloe running, Chloe’s fist against the cheap plaster in the wall because _fuck this_ and _fuck you Maxine Caulfield_. It’s Chloe thinking about a lighter against her skin and how she swore she’d never go down that path again, Chloe and a bottle in each hand and not being brave enough to wish that things had turned out different, and _knowing_ that.

Max’s bad days are quiet and still. It’s Max flinching when Chloe’s arm brushes against hers, Max’s eyes caught on the skyline, like she’s looking for something she won’t ever find (and once Chloe would’ve panicked at that, would’ve thought _shit, she wishes she hadn’t chosen me_ but now she knows better), Max at 2am in the bathroom, one hand against her nose like she’s trying to stop the flow of blood that isn’t there.

But six months in and she doesn’t know how to keep going. Chloe is tired tired tired, there’s only so long you can run off rage (something she’s been doing for exactly her _entire life_ ) and it comes when Max is out and Chloe throws her half-empty beer she has in her hand and against the motel wall, shattering just as Max enters, plastic bag full of supplies (because how fucking domestic does _groceries_ sound). Max blinks at her, Chloe’s chest is heaving because she can’t stop crying, can’t stop thinking and it slips out before Chloe can stop herself:

“Fuck _You_.”

Max blinks once more, drops the shopping right there in the doorway and turns and heads back out into the cold. Because she knows _exactly_ what Chloe meant, what it was about, because she knows Chloe knows and in an instant the breath is taken from Chloe, in an instant Chloe hesitates about following max out, but she does anyway, after bringing the ( _fuck it)_ groceries all the way inside. she stops, turns, and after a moment’s consideration, throws the glass tumbler that was sitting on the bedside table against the other wall as well.

-

“Max,” Chloe calls, her voice lost in the wind. The snow is three inches thick, her boots heavy and sinking with each step she takes. “Max” she calls again, and chloe doesn’t have to look very hard because in rural Virginia there’s not exactly many places _to_ go.

Chloe finds her in the car, fists clenched on the wheel, like she’s about to drive the car straight into the concrete slab of the motel front. She taps on the window. Sure, they both have keys to it by now but that’s not what this is about, and for the first time in her life Chloe’s trying to think this through, even with her heart trying to beat its way out of her chest. She taps again, just in case Max didn’t here her. She’s trying, but hell that doesn’t mean that she has tact.

She tries the door, and it’s unlocked, so she swings it open and climbs into the passenger seat. Max doesn’t look at her, it doesn’t seem like she’s looking at anything, like her body’s here but her mind is caught somewhere Chloe can’t touch her.

They’ve both been here too many times to bother counting.

“Max,” Chloe begins, then stops. She realises suddenly that she doesn’t know how to do _this_.

“Max,” She tries again. “I didn’t mean it.” It’s a half truth.

Because she did mean it absolutely, Chloe means it when she thinks too hard or drinks too much or on a low day when the weight of 5,000 people presses down on her chest til she can’t breathe.

And Max, of all people, should understand that, should understand that the lie is in blaming Max when really it’s always been about blaming herself, but Chloe gets caught up in this and Max gets caught up in her head and Chloe doesn’t know how but she only knows that if they don’t start looking up instead of looking back they’re both going to lose themselves to this for good.

And Chloe really fucking wishes at that moment that she knew how to say all of that. Any of it.

So instead she does what she can, reaches over, watching Max the whole time, and pries one of Max’s hands off the wheel and gently, into her own.

She presses it against her mouth. “I’m sorry okay?” She says into the hand, into Max, because that’s the best Chloe’s got in her right now. Her voice almost breaks the second time, because she means it, she really does.

“I’m sorry.”

It seems to break whatever trance Max was in because Max jerks, then turns her head to chloe’s, her eyes bright and shining.

“Don’t” Max says furiously, that brutal fierce look that Chloe has only ever gotten glimpses of, that she hasn’t seen since that last day when-

“Don’t,” Max repeats, “ever apologise for _that._ ”

It takes Chloe a moment, and then she wants to laugh and cry, because of course Max understands, of _course_ , and she wonders again at the miracle of a girl sitting in the driver’s seat next to her.

“I’ll never regret saving you” and she’s meeting Chloe’s eyes the entire time, whose entire body is still and shaking and that’s not even physically fucking possible-

“I never have and I never will,” Max finishes, and that is _the_ truth.

And although it’s loaded with unspoken sentiments that Chloe won’t even begin to unravel, it’s enough. It’s more than enough for Chloe to press Max’s hand against her mouth again and kiss it, for Max to close her eyes and let a small smile appear.

“That’s not all I was apologising for.” Chloe says, because it has to be said, and Chloe will vaccum the entire god damn motel if she had to, to make sure that every piece of broken glass was found.

“Come on,” and this time Max says it, takes the hand Chloe had been holding to her lips and locks it with Chloe’s fingers, “let’s go inside.”

 

-

 

There’s good days and bad days. Max hasn’t ever time travelled again, and if she knows Max (which she does) she probably hasn’t tried once.

 

The good days are like this:

 

Thirteen months in the future and they’re in a motel, Max is curled up naked next to her, her arm slung around Chloe’s waist. a bottle of pink dye sits on the small bedside table next to them, that Chloe used hours before. That Max insisted on helping with. It had ended in stained hands and splotchy clothes and though chloe’s hair was now bright bubblegum pink, it had led to where they were now, their clothes strewn across the floor.

She looks down at max, the light freckles that dust her face, the worn lines drawn under her eyes that never completely faded.

_“Shit”_ Chloe thinks, not for the first time this year, _“you’re going soft, Price.”_ She knows it’s true when that thought doesn’t affect her, when she considers the girl in her arms and thinks about worthiness. About redemption.  

Good days and bad days and Chloe never understood it, not really, how seeing Max again (and it’s been over a _year_ now) had kickstarted her heart, had encompassed her whole world, had _made_ Max her world, even with the torch she carried for Rachel, even with the anger and the shock, Max sitting there in her pick up truck that first time had felt so _natural_ – it wasn’t something Chloe ever thought she would get used to, that still leaves her struck and hazy-eyed.

Chloe used to count a good day as scoring some joints, as a flash of Rachel’s bare skin, as a day where she didn’t have to see David _once_.

Now the good days are like this; the girl she loves, and the girl she loves _staying_.

-

And It’s not the life that Max would’ve ever picked, this much Chloe knows. It’s not the life she wanted to give Max either, but if this is the price (and her anger has turned into resentment Chloe won’t ever bring into the light again, because it’s not something that either of them will ever truly get past, and Chloe is starting to _accept_ that), then Chloe will pay it again and again and again.

 

For getting to see Max laugh properly, a year and a half in on a beach on San Jose (close enough to home to matter, far enough way not to feel it).

 

For Max’s lips on hers, every time.

 

Even for seeing the way Max’s hands shake when Chloe presses a flip phone into the palm of her hand, see her see the camera without saying a word.

 

And when Max yells at her for stealing, when she yells at Max because she’s tired after driving for five hours straight, because she still has days when she feels like nothing, like she did before, still like the girl whose best friend they dug up in the mid-afternoon behind some train tracks.

 

For the way Max looked at Chloe when she took Max’s hand on a made-up anniversary that wouldn’t hurt, led her to the top of the hotel they’ve been staying at for three weeks now, at the picnic blanket, the cheap-ass wine, the candles and shit even flowers because maybe Chloe Price is a huge fucking sap, but only Max Caulfield ever gets to see it.

 

And Arcadia Bay (because she can at least think the name now, without it hurting _that_ much) follows them, country-city-coast, beat for beat and they keep driving, up, across, and back again, though it’s getting slower, steadier, and it’s unspoken that they’re both feeling like the need to run is becoming _less_ than the need to stop (and that’s something else that’s new, that Chloe Price never thought she’d even want). And when Max talks about going overseas, about england one day, Chloe thinks _rain_ and _cold_ but there’s Max with _that_ look in her eyes and-

 

And yeah. Chloe Price is a huge fucking sap.

 

 

-

 

“You sure you want to do this?” Chloe asks, a grin tugging at her lips.

 

“Yeah, well,” Max huffs next to her, her eyes tracing designs from the book she held in her hand. “I’ve got to catch up to you eventually, right?”

 

_Shit_ , Chloe thinks, and she turns and kisses Max hard, right there in the tattoo salon.

 

“I know I don’t say it much,” and Max is already smiling (and Chloe would _die_ for that smile) “but I fucking love you, Caulfield.”

 

Max opens her mouth to answer – it’s not like either of them have _never_ said it before, but instead she kisses Chloe again, once more, then lets her go.

 

She lifts the book up and taps on a design to show Chloe. “This one, I think.”

 

Chloe lets out a laugh then, that’s more of a bark, because she’s not surprised at what Max has chosen, because the image brings back everything; the before and the after and the between, and it’s an ache but it’s familiar and settled and she doesn’t know what to say except-

 

“Hell Max, I thought you’d be going for something a bit more punk rock by now.”

 

And Max knows her (always has), knows the in-between-lines Chloe can’t say, so she smiles, replies instead.

 

“Says the one who has a whole arm sleeve of flowers.” She teases.

 

“Vines” Chloe replies, as Max leans her head against Chloe’s shoulder. “They’re vines”

 

“And besides,” Max continues, her voice just marginally softer. “This way we’ll match.”

 

Chloe looks down again, at the simple butterfly design Max has picked out, with its wings unfurled and full.

 

_Yeah_ , Chloe thinks. _Yeah, we will._


End file.
